


The FBI, in the Mansion, with the Motive

by Entity_Sylvir



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Also mentions of bad things happening to cows (is that a warning?), Case Fic, Gen, Humour?, M/M, Murder (surprise surprise), Parlour Mystery, Parody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 20:50:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1361341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Entity_Sylvir/pseuds/Entity_Sylvir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Invited out to the countryside, the FBI team find themselves ensnared in a cosy classic of a case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The FBI, in the Mansion, with the Motive

"A country house." Will stated, voice flatter than an undercooked soufflé. "Because that won't be conspicuous at all."

 

Jack shrugged, locking the car and propping his dark yellow hat atop his head. "The killer has been targeting farmers in a very select area and the closest hotel is an hour's drive. The mayor was very kind in letting us stay in his family mansion."

 

"I think it's quite lovely," Bella said, looking down the neatly-trimmed drive as her white coat flapped against her knees in the gentle breeze. "He must be a very generous mayor."

 

Will sighed, shivering a little in his thin green jacket. "And why is she here, again?" he muttered in an undertone.

 

"Because," Jack muttered back, "Bella loves these places and I thought it would be a nice break."

 

"Right, and nothing says romantic couple's retreat like a lunatic who's gutting cows and smothering their breeders with offal."

 

"Oh shush," Beverly cut in. "I for one am glad to have some space for once." She winked and tightened her blue scarf around her neck. "Last one to the door is a rotten corpse!"

 

Behind the rest of the group, Hannibal and Alana shared the glance of mutual consolation as can only be shared between long-suffering psychiatrists.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The hall was a grand affair that loudly proclaimed the elegance of the house the second they stepped inside. The floor was polished oak, the dark walls standing proudly straight (as walls are generally wont to do). Flames already blazed in a fireplace directly across from the door, and the heat of the interior prompted the company to begin making use of the coat stand.

 

Hannibal removed his deep purple suit jacket and helped Alana out of her blood-red coat with a gentlemanly smile before stepping around Will who seemed rather distracted by the stand's antler-like design. His pondering of whose it had been was interrupted when a stocky man with thick brows bustled out of what was presumably the kitchen, judging by the fragrant waft that followed him through the door and the apron tied around his waist which proclaimed, 'KISS ME, I'M A MAYOR.'

 

"Ah, Mr. Boddy," Jack greeted, holding out a hand. "Jack Crawford from the FBI. This is my team."

 

The man grinned brightly. "Hello, hello! I'd glad you all made it in one piece!" He glanced down at Jack's outstretched arm with a little apologetic tilt of his head. "Forgive me if I don't shake right now, I'm a little in the middle of using my hands." He wiggled his fingers and a black gem ring on his left hand glinted in the light. "Dinner will be ready in a just a moment, if you'd care to wait in the dining room to your left here. I could probably afford somebody to cook around here but I'm afraid I enjoy it rather too much myself, if selection of chef doesn't disappoint you too much?"

 

"I'm sure it won't be," Beverly said pleasantly. "It already smells delicious."

 

"Well I'm glad you think so!" Mayor Boddy replied. "And I do hope that if you enjoy the smell of someone cooking, you'll enjoy the taste even more!"

 

Everyone looked concernedly at Hannibal who seemed to be suddenly overcome with a small coughing fit.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Dinner was indeed delicious, and the mayor stayed bright almost throughout despite the situation which had called his guests.

 

"I've got a double mattress in the lounge for Mr. and Mrs. Crawford," he explained as he ladled out rich stew into their bowls. "I've also set up two portable beds in the study, and the library and billiard room both have comfortable fold-out couches."

 

"Sorry, but I can't really sleep on couches," Beverly said. "They smell too much like pants."

 

Will frowned. "You can smell pants?

 

"I, for one, cannot," Hannibal stated, surreptitiously nabbing at his mouth with his napkin to disguise how he'd been drooling over the antique silverware. "Therefore, I would be happy to take the library."

 

"If Will doesn't mind, I'll take the other bed in Beverly's room and you can have one to yourself?" Alana said.

 

"Oh, yes. Of course. Good, myself." Will replied only a little to quickly, dragging his gaze from Hannibal's lips.

 

"Well, that's settled, then!" Boddy beamed a little too widely at Will. It only faltered a little when Hannibal snapped his spoon in half. "I can help you take your suitcases in when we finish eating. You clever lot can get on with your investigation tomorrow after a good night's sleep. I'll have breakfast ready when you wake up!" He sat himself back in his seat and turned to his own bowl. "I'm so glad you're here. The local police are utterly unused to this kind of thing, and it's been such a shock to everyone. I don't think poor Mrs. Ditty's ever going to recover."

 

"Ah, yes. That's the wife of Paul Ditty, the first victim?" Jack asked.

 

"Yes, that's the one. Such a shame, she's a lovely woman. Volunteers down at the school, and her beef pies have never come below first in the bake-off. Then there's also Miss Tanner, the school nurse, very pretty and so put together on the outside even now but she's still under care in the clinic. She was best friends with Mrs. Ditty, you see, I suppose you'll want to talk to her? Her pies have always taken second place so it looks like we'll be having a sad bake-off this year." The mayor sighed sadly. "It may seem petty to you, but our community stands on these little things."

 

"I understand," Jack said softly. "If you have any more information, we'd be glad to hear it in more detail tomorrow."

 

"Of course." Boddy nodded stiffly, then took a deep breath and smiled again. "But that's for later. For tonight, let me tell you a bit more of our town. The pumpkin pageant is another highlight of our year, and all the drama there is down at the clinic. Nurse Everly has a green thumb the size of her whole hand, but Doctor Grayton's quite the gardener himself and those two have been passing the ribbon back and forth since he moved here seven years ago..."

 

 

* * *

 

 

When Beverly Katz woke up the next morning, she was disappointed that the smell of Mayor Boddy's wonderful cooking was not already permeating the house as he'd promised. The sunlight was filtering only dimly through the drawn curtains and she'd at first thought she'd woken too early, but Alana's bed was already empty beside hers. Shaking off the remnants of a dream about running from a couch wearing a giant pair of pants and finding herself in a pie factory run by walking pumpkins, she slipped into a jacket and crept through the half-open door into the chilly hall. The fires had died out during the night, and in the room had been left with a slightly stifling air which, combined with the low light, made her feel like she was trapped in the belly of a very posh whale. She padded to the door on bare feet and pulled it open by its two ornate handles, to realise why the sunlight was so feeble through the windows.

 

They were snowed in. The temperature must have dropped during the night with vicious results. She could barely see a little bit of sky at the very top of the doorway over the pile of white.

 

"Well, crap."

 

"Huh?"

  
She turned to see a very rumpled-looking Will standing behind her, looking a little guilty for some reason with his eyes flicking back and forth as if he wanted to look over his shoulder.

 

"Oh," he continued when he saw the doorway, blinking a little dumbly. "When did that happen?"

 

"It must have fallen overnight," Hannibal answered, stepping out of the library wearing a dressing gown over what appeared to be a dress shirt and suit pants. _Wow_ , thought Beverly, _did he sleep in a suit?_ Or maybe a suit for him is the equivalent of sleeping naked.

 

"Thanks, Captain Obvious," Will muttered under his breath.

 

"Who is that?" Hannibal asked, looking seriously 99.978% sincere. "Is it one of your 'popped culture' references? Should I be flattered by the comparison?"

 

Beverly was saved from having to answer by Jack and Bella making their ways out. "Oh dear," Bella said. "What shall we do now? Call somebody?"

 

"I don't think a town like this will have a snowplough service," Jack grunted. "Looks like we're going to have to dig."

 

"And by 'we' you mean everyone but you," Will muttered again.

 

"Beg pardon?"

 

"I said, good idea let's find Boddy and ask him for some shovels."

 

In the ensuing search Hannibal found the host's bedroom empty, though fortunately Jack was able to pick up a couple of shovels from the cellar as well as some large buckets to hold the snow. Will, meanwhile, stumbled into the kitchen to see no cook but appliances and utensils enough to give Hannibal a boner.

 

"Perhaps he stepped out late last night," Bella suggested with they reconvened and Beverly and Hannibal took up the shovels. "Then the snow began and he couldn't get back."

 

"Why didn't he call, then?" Will wondered aloud. Something unsettling ...settled in the pit of his stomach. Or perhaps he was hungry. That was a good possibility too.

 

A second later, the snick-snick of rusty metal on snow stopped. "Uh, guys, you might want to see this," came Beverly's hesitant voice after a pause.

 

Unveiled now from within the snow, slumped across the doorstep, were the pale digits of a human hand. On it, they could recognise the gem ring of Mayor Boddy.

 

"Well I'm still hungry," Will announced, then cringed when everyone looked at him strangely.

 

Just then the bathroom door opened and Alana stepped out with damp hair and a towel around her shoulders. "Oh, everyone's up. Did I miss anything?"

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Here," Beverly said from where she was lying face-down on the floor of the hall.

 

"Hmm?" Jack asked.

 

"Drag marks."

 

"You mean the killer wore a dress?"

 

Bella smacked him upside the head.

 

"It's been wiped up, but not perfectly," Beverly continued without missing a beat, pointing to a spot of floorboard where, if they stooped and looked closely, could be seen a narrow red smear. "It's too small to be sure it's blood, and it could have been there before, but it doesn't seem too unlikely that that he was attacked inside then his body dragged out."

 

"He died sometime before the snowfall, since he was beneath all of it," Hannibal proclaimed knowledgeably, as if he were a great general announcing his victory over a mountain from the back of an elephant. "I would not place exposure on the list of possible causes of death," he continued in his best doctor voice, "but it is possible he was stricken with a heart attack or some other natural end. Though that would then raise the question of why he was on the doorstep."

 

"We're going to have to do a lot more digging before we can see the rest of the body," Beverly said, "so looks like it's all speculation for now. Will?"

 

"Hmm?" Will jumped back to attention from where he'd been distracted by a picture of a dog on the wall, then shook his head. "No. If it was murder then he probably wasn't killed here, and we have no idea how. Nothing much I can do with that, sorry."

 

"So, we assume it's foul play," Jack said. "Then what?"

 

Bella smiled thinly. "Then you investigate, right?"

 

 

* * *

 

 

Bella, Hannibal, and Alan continued to work at the snow while the rest split up the house between them. Will took the man's bedroom, Jack the rooms that had been unused for the night were therefore the other most likely possibilities for the murder location, and Beverly the rooms that they had occupied just to be thorough.

 

Boddy's bed had the covers pulled up yet looked like it been slept in, a set of pyjamas laid out on the chair beside it. A wine glass sat on his bedside with a few dregs of red at the bottom, the bottle itself on the shelf on the opposite wall. Will put on a pair of gloves and picked the glass up, examining it closely with his eyes, then sniffed.

 

"Dr. Lecter," he called, stepping back out into the hall. "Can you come here a second? I need your opinion."

 

 

 

Meanwhile, Jack found the dining room undisturbed, though he noticed for the first time that one of the candlesticks was missing from the large stand on the small side table. Whether this was a new development since the night, however, he couldn't be sure. The kitchen, also, seemed free of evidence if it had been entered, though his eyes picked up an empty slot in the knife block. Down in the cellar he almost tripped over a length of rope, a wrench, and a piece of piping lying haphazardly on the ground just past where he'd found the shovels, but it was such a mess he wouldn't be able to tell if there had been a struggle there. The bathroom was similarly unmarked, though opening a cabinet he found a revolver sitting beside a pile of unopened toothpaste. An odd place for a gun, but that was America for you.

 

"Killers," he sighed when he noticed the revolver was covered by a layer of dust which proved it had been untouched for some time, "why can't they ever do things the easy way in the cases we investigate? Do they issue copyright contracts for original murder methods or something?"

 

 

 

Beverly, unsurprisingly, found equally little. Her and Alana's study was untouched, with little furniture except for a sparse bookshelf and a large pine desk. The lounge room had a double mattress planted in the middle of the floor amongst a few single couch chairs and a small television. Will's couch bed in the billiard room was very neatly made, in contrast to the tangled mess of clothes she could see in his open suitcase. There was a cloak cupboard on the opposite wall which she opened for a quick glance, finding it empty except for two black jackets and a rather bulky floor-length coat made from garish orange wool. The library smelt musky as all libraries tended to in her experience, and Hannibal's bed and was also meticulously made. She spent a little time among the piles of old books which intimidated her with their thickness even today, briefly entertaining the possibility of death by Leo Tolstoy before shaking herself and heading back out.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When they reconvened, again, (re-reconvened?), the unfortunate Boddy's arm was visible to the elbow and Bella had cooked up a simple breakfast for everyone.

 

"It seems our killer was sly," Beverly said as they all seated themselves at the dining table.

 

"Maybe it's the Chesapeake Ripper!" Jack exclaimed.

 

Beverly face-palmed. Bella elbowed him in the ribs. Hannibal had another small coughing fit.

 

"There was most definitely somebody else present last night," Hannibal said once he'd recovered, reaching for a piece of toast with only a little grimace. "Will noticed a scent in the bedroom, I personally distinguished it to several. There was scented lip-gloss on the wineglass, and also perfume on the sheets. Specifically, I would say someone female present." He spread butter on his slice with a dainty quirk of his nose that made him look a little like a rabbit who'd accidentally walked into a sewer. "Additionally, I could detect his atrocious aftershave which I am certain has a purple bottle."

 

Will frowned. "You can smell purple?

 

"Could Boddy have a visitor?" Alana pressed on. "A lover he had to keep secret?"

 

Hannibal shook his head. "If it was a visitor, surely there would be two glasses of wine? He kept a bottle in his bedroom so he was clearly a regular drinker."

 

"But then if she sneaked in, why would she be in bed with him?"

 

"She wasn't," Will said softly, eyes fixed on the centre of the table, which happened to be a large jug of orange juice. It wasn't entirely obvious if he was deep in thought or deep in fruit cravings. "He was never in bed, his pyjamas were still laid out. There was something else in the glass which didn't smell quite right, Dr. Lecter identified it as a sedative. We did a bit of searching and found a regularly used bottle in his drawers." His voice took on a far-away sort of quality, like the sound of a child screaming from the top of a ferris wheel. "And the other odd thing is the body. Why dump it on the doorstep? It's hardly hidden. If it was mean to be displayed for us, why not leave it in the house?"

 

Jack leaned in. "What do you see, Will?"

 

"The killer wasn't after him," he continued slowly. "She sneaked in to see us, but Boddy was still up and maybe he heard something. She killed him, and dragged him to the doorstep. She hadn't worked out what to do with him, perhaps she was panicking, so she went back inside and drank some wine to calm her nerves. She realised too late that Boddy was in the practice of taking his nightcap with a sedative to help himself sleep, and by the time she woke up after passing out she was snowed in."

 

A long silence ensued. In the end, it was Alana who murmured, "that means she must be still in the house."

 

There was a moment where everyone except for Will suddenly glanced around like the creepy open-mouthed wooden clowns who shook their heads at little kids out to waste their parents' money at carnivals, before they realised they were (mostly) FBI investigators who had handled much worse. Will, meanwhile, continued staring as if he was the guy from X-Men who shot lasers from his eyes and the orange juice had severely wronged him.

 

"There's been someone in the hall the entire time," Bella said finally. "And you can't go between rooms unless you go into the hall, so she must have hidden when we were still sleeping."

 

Jack smiled fondly at his wife for her deduction before frowning and protesting, "But we've searched everywhere! Unless she's up the chimney, I don't see how she could have stayed hidden."

 

The possibility of a murderous female Santa Claus was being considering when Beverly said, "Wait a second," and stood abruptly and left the room.

 

The rest following perplexedly as she lead them into the billiard room, pressed a finger to her lips before walking up to the cloak cupboard and quietly pulling open the doors.

 

"Good morning, ma'am," she said pleasantly to the hideous orange coat. "We know you're there so you may as well come out before I have get the ironing board."

 

There was a pause where Alana and Hannibal exchanged psychiatrist's glances again and Bella wondered if she'd accidentally put hallucinogens in the breakfast. Then, miraculously, the coat moved.

 

 _It's alive!_ Jack thought, preparing to panic, before he remembered, again (re-remembered?) that he was an FBI investigator who had faced mushroom-men and angel-men and could face coat-men too if it came down to it.

 

The sides of the coat spread apart, and out stepped a short snarling woman from where she'd been wrapped within. Her hair was done and her face well made-up despite her hospital gown, and she glared daggers from beneath her angry brow.

 

"Miss Tanner, I believe," Will greeted softly. "Our errant murderer, and so it seems our cow and farmer killer too." From the sharp looks he got at that, he elaborated. "As Mayor Boddy informed us last night, Miss Tanner has been continuously losing to our first victim's wife, Mrs. Ditty, in comparison between their beef pies. Finally she was unable to take it any longer, but also unwilling to blame her best friend, so she took it out on the cows—and indirectly also their breeders."

 

"Ah," Jack said. "Culinary motive, original yet again. Are you alright?" he asked when Hannibal had yet another coughing fit.

 

"Supposedly still under medical care, she had the perfect alibi when she sneaked out of the clinic to commit the other murders," Beverly surmised. "And last night she came to see the new team they'd brought in, maybe planned to do away with a few of us in our sleep, but Boddy spotted her. Maybe he even made the connection when he realised she wasn't really in shock. So she silenced him."

 

"With a knife in the kitchen," the murderous (literally) lady grumbled.

 

"Ah, so that's settled, then," Alana said. "But what I don't get is, how did she manage to get in here without waking Will? I thought you weren't a very heavy sleeper?" she inquired, and frowned curiously when the man in question began to pink.

 

"Oh. Um, that," he mumbled. "Well, I, uh, may not have been in this room for all of the night."

 

It was about then that Alana also noticed that Hannibal was very deliberately examining his manicure instead of looking at her. "Right. Never mind."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Not long after, they were back in the hall where work continued on the snow digging from everyone except Jack (surprise surprise) who sat guarding the now rope-bound Miss Tanner and considering their latest success.

 

"A clean case," he declared. "Good work, team."

 

The other investigators gave non-committal snow-covered noises, and his wife flashed him a small smile.

 

"Yes, well done," she said fondly, walking over and leaning down to press a kiss to his forehead.

 

He smiled back, and as she straightened noticed that his seated position put his nose close to the waistband of her jeans. He took a breath and said, considering, "You know, Agent Katz, I think I can smell pants too."

 

Bella smacked him upside the head.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little less than serious something, uh, based on the game Cluedo, also called Clue, with the standard characters of Scarlet, Plum, Green, Mustard, Peacock, and White. Some releases also added other characters including an orange one called Peach, and the Mr. Black the victim in later additions was sometimes renamed Mr. Boddy because that's all he seemed to be (ha, geddit?). Mind you, those last two things I didn't actually know until I looked the game up on Wikipedia. So, Miss Peach in the kitchen with the knife!
> 
> I haven't written fanfiction in a very long time so, I hope someone enjoyed?


End file.
